


Somewhere Beyond

by snowydot



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23921974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowydot/pseuds/snowydot
Summary: The world was silent. The streets, empty. And then there was Beca. Chloe wasn’t ready for all the questions she left inside her head.
Relationships: Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell
Comments: 30
Kudos: 52





	Somewhere Beyond

Life is crazy and unfair.

That’s what adults tell kids right before they caress their soft hair and send them their way, even though they’ve woken up from a nightmare and “I don’t wanna go to school” are the first words spoken that day. 

“You have to, sweetheart.” The words reach her ears but her mom doesn’t look at her. 

Chloe tilts her head down, her red hair falling around her face. She waits to find out which one of her older siblings is going to come and comfort her. Today it’s Lisa. They have an ice cream date after school, just like always happens when little Chloe is moody. 

Between all her six siblings, Lisa is the one Chloe was attached to the most. She doesn’t remember much about Mia and Johnny, Chloe was a toddler when they left for College. But she was six when Lisa’s turn arrived and Chloe remembers crying her heart out, not wanting to let her sister go. 

That night, she slept with her brother in Lisa’s old bedroom. And, even being nine years older than her, Gus was patient enough to answer her questions for a long time. 

“Why can’t I stay with Lisa’s bedroom?”

“Because it’s too big and you’re too little.”

“Why Ollie doesn’t share the room with you anymore? You’re twins.”

“Because we’re fifteen now. We need privacy.” 

“Why Lisa had to leave?”

“Because she went to College.”

“Well, I  _hate_ College.”

She heard her brother’s low laugh. “Go to sleep, Chlo.” 

Chloe turned between the blankets and left sleep take her, her little fingers caressing the bunny she had pressed firmly against her chest. 

Of course her curiosity grew day after day. Chloe devoured her dad’s science books and encyclopedias that theorized about the galaxy and other planets. 

The questions were too big for her tiny mind. “Dad, do you really think black holes are portals to other dimensions?” She asked one day, placing a finger on thebook page to not lose it.

“Oh yeah!”

“But... how do we get there?”

“You have to be an astronaut, sweetie. Or work in places like NASA.”

“But what if I find a portal to another dimension here on Earth?” 

Her father laughed at her words. “I don’t know about that, Chlo.” He stopped to place a kiss on her forehead before following to the kitchen. 

Wow, Chloe though. Life  _is_ crazy.

So she kept questioning. 

“Dad, did you and mom planned to have seven children?”

“Yes! We wanted a big big family!”

“Well, did you know seven is the number of perfection?” Her mother, who was cooking next to them, turned to face her daughter, a shocked expression filling her face. “And I’m your seventh child. Do you think it makes me special?”

“Absolutely. You’re the most special little girl I know.” Her father laughed. It was so easy to make him laugh.

One day, when Chloe was ten, she woke up to find Lisa and her mother talking on the kitchen. Both of them were crying and Chloe didn’t understand what was happening, until her brother Nate, the only one who hadn’t left yet, whispered in her ear, “Lisa’s having a baby.”

A few days later, Lisa and her boyfriend Ben came to live with them for a short period of time. Chloe thought she would be happy for finally having her sister back, but this Lisa was nothing like the the one she remembered. Her sister would mess up with her, take her to ice cream dates and secretly teach her bad words. The one who came back looked like... an adult. Chloe felt disappointed. 

Lisa started to work in their dad’s business. It didn’t felt right once more, because Lisa wanted to be a psychologist. She shouldn’t have given up on College. But that was something Chloe only understood when she met her niece. Lisa and Ben gave up on their dreams for love. It was worth it.

After that, time seemed to fly before Chloe’s eyes. Almost all of her siblings were married and had babies by the time she went to College. And she definitely wasn’t prepared to find out, only two weeks after she’d left home, that her dad had passed away.

Her sweet, sweet dad, who would question the world with her until late in the night. Her dad, who met her siblings’ kids, but would never meet hers.

Life  _definitely_ is unfair.

*** 

Vet school is kicking Chloe’s ass.

It’s easy to spend every minute she has with her head buried in books after books, trying to absorb as much information as possible before her big final test, after wishing to be accepted in the school so badly.

For the biggest part of the weeks, Chloe handles everything greatly. But eventually, exhaustion gets her. It always does, almost as if it’s rehearsed: she’ll wake up one day and not feel like smiling all the time. In days like that, Chloe’s classmates will stare weirdly at her for a long time before one of them touches her arm carefully and asks, voice filled with fake concern, “What happened, Chlo?” 

She’ll get home to a few glasses of wine and look out from her window at the world that sighs and twirls before her eyes, thinking that’s funny how in everybody’s minds, our humor is directly affected by a specific reason. As if Chloe’s reality  _has_ to interfere in her feelings. She can’t be happy, or sad, or pissed just because. 

The last time she watched an episode of her favorite show or hang out with her best friend are long forgotten memories. Aubrey still texts her daily to remind her the way she’s living is not healthy. But Chloe is stubborn. And she won’t stop studying her ass off, no matter if she’s being too hard on herself. 

Her head bobs up in a rush and for a minute she doesn’t know where she is. Her surrounding is slowly recognized as she blinks lazily, realizing she had fallen asleep while studying in the library.

She blinks down at the book opened in front of her. There’s a dark stain covering half the page and Chloe curses under her breath when she sees her cup of coffee on the floor. She quickly cleans the mess she’s made somewhere between being fully focused on studying and suddenly giving up to sleep and decides she should give herself a little bit of rest, even though it isn’t even five thirty. 

“Already leaving, Chlo?” She hears behind her as she walks down the stairs.

Chloe turns to the voice. “Martha, hi!” She greets her classmate. “Yes, I’m going home. My brain will explode if I think about canine leishmaniasis for one more second, so I’m gonna get some rest before I go insane.”

Martha laughs. “Man, I totally get it! Immunology is killing me!”

Both girls enter the bathroom, still talking to each other about classes. Chloe usually loves talking to Martha, but Martha is the kind of girl who won’t stop talking if she’s given the opportunity to (pretty much like Chloe herself), so Chloe excuses herself to actually use the toilet, hoping Martha would be gone by the time she’s done. 

Martha does leave, and Chloe feels internally thankful, but also a little guilty. If it was another day, she would gladly talk to her friend all day long, but right now there’s nothing Chloe wants more than a relaxing bath and some wine, even though she’s aware it’s a bad idea to drink alcohol, given her emotionally fragile state and exhausted body. 

The person who’s looking back at her in the mirror looks like anyone but Chloe. Her eyes are swollen and her face is pale. Her beautiful red curls are up in a ponytail, clearly not remembering what it means to be washed in at least four days, and Chloe’s clothes look less radiant, even though her jacket is colored in a mix of rainbow colors.

She sighs, feeling the exhaustion deep inside her chest as she washes her face totry and look less like a zombie so she can finally take her thirty minutes walk back home.

The corridors are completely empty when Chloe leaves the bathroom. She checks her messages to be sure the dog shelter she has been trying to adopt a dog from haven’t sent any more texts and puts her earphones on, reaching the street in a minute and turning to the right to follow her way. 

She looks up at the sky. After walking to school every day for the past two years, it quickly became an habit for Chloe to watch the sky as she does so. It’s the first thing she does whenever she’s leaving her house or the school. Sometimes she thinks the sky has its own humor, and even though the buildings and the streets are always the same, it’s incredible how much they can change if Chloe looks up firstly. 

Her favorite days are the sunny ones, when the sky is clear and carries fluffy clouds that come and go nonstop. It makes the city look like a brand new painting that overflows with happiness, and Chloe swears she can smell the fresh paints if she closes her eyes long enough; today, though, is one of those white days. Chloe hates them. There’s so many white everywhere: in the sky, most of the houses and the giant mall at the corner of the school’s street. Everything is foggy, and it somehow makes Chloe feel moody and unmotivated. 

So many words come and go in her mind as she desperately tries to memorize every detail about immunology and anesthetics, which is the subject she has been focusing the most. The music is loud in her ears and she faces the floor as she crosses the street. And if Chloe wasn’t so lost inside her own brain, she would’ve noticed how empty the streets are. Not a single car goes up the avenues, not a single person bumps into her shoulder.

Chloe shrugs. She moves her bag to one shoulder as she tries to take her jacket off without stop walking. It happens all the time. Chloe can get cold really easily, but she also gets too hot just as fast. In days like that, when the sky is completely white for how cold it is, Chloe wakes up in the morning and covers up her body with many layers of clothing, only to take them all off when she’s ten minutes away from home and her interior starts too feel too warm for her liking. She hates it. 

The cold wind contrasts agains Chloe’s warm skin as she stops eventually, adjusting the book she carries in hand so it doesn’t fall to the floor. She shoves her jacket over it and taps on her phone screen to skip a song she doesn’t want to listen, adjusting her earphones in her ears before she’s walking again. She’s almost at the end of the street when something in her brain clicks and she looks up, not recognizing where she is. Chloe looks around, spotting a small grocery shop that tells her she has entered a street earlier than she should have.

She stops walking again, facing the grocery shop. The lights are off and it doesn’t seem like there’s anybody inside, which is weird, because the door is open and things look normal. Only that they aren’t, and for the first time since she left the school, Chloe takes the earphones out and hears... nothing. No cars passing by her or crossing the avenue behind her. No people’s voices talking to each other or birds in the sky flying towards the tiny line of orange that tells Chloe it’s about to become night. 

Until this moment, Chloe’s never stopped to consider how loud silence can be. She hears the way her boot touch the floor as she nervously shakes her foot, and every time the air leaves her mouth. There’s an annoying  _beep_ sound in her ears, just like hospital machines sound when a heart stops beating. Chloe doesn’t like how it makes her feel; all the heat she was feeling is gone and her fingers freeze against the cold earphones she’s still holding. Chloe is about to turn the music on once more, but a loud crashing sound disturbs her and she runs. She runs fast, even though her sense of direction is gone by now and she’s sure she’ll find a car accident in the street in front of her. 

But there’s nothing but a girl. A short brunette girl, who’s apparently fighting to carry two heavy boxes inside her house. 

Chloe sighs, running her right hand through her forehead. “Hey!” She approaches the girl. “Do you need any help?”

The girl looks relieved as she lets a nervous laugh out. “Yes, please!” She turns around so Chloe can take one of the boxes from her. “I’m Beca.”

“Chloe,” she half smiles. 

Beca lifts a knee to help her readjust the heavy box in her arms. “You’re the first one I see in a while.”

Chloe tilts her head in confusion. She walks through these streets everyday and she  _knows_ they are full of people, especially by this time of the day, when most students are going back home. “What do you mean?” 

The other girl lifts a shoulder, as if saying ‘whatever’. “I’ve been stuck in here for seven years.”

Chloe closes her eyes and silently laughs to herself, thinking about how the number seven keeps finding its way to her life all the time, even in silly circumstances. 

As creepy as it can be, Chloe was obsessed with the number when she was younger, and she probably still has the notebook with all the information she’s collected from her dad’s books about its mysteries. It used to intrigue her in a way nothing else did: seven, the number of days God created the world. There are seven deadly sins, seven sacraments in the church. The Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the four elements (water, air, fire and earth) together make seven. There are seven musical notes that repeat themselves in infinite scales and seven colors in a rainbow. 

And when she stops to think about herself, Chloe Rosalie Beale, whose full name contains 17 letters, the seventh child of John and Mary Beale and (middle) named after her grandmother, who died seven years before she was born, it somehow makes her feel like she’s part of a mystery, too.

And Chloe loves mysteries. 

“Can you leave the box inside for me, please?” 

Chloe blinks. “Sure.” 

She enters the house and leaves the box on top of the one Beca’s put on the floor. 

“You look tired.” Chloe hears behind her, and she can only agree with the words spoken so surely by the unknown girl. 

“Hm, yeah. Finals are in a couple weeks, so I’ve been studying a little more.” Beca raises an eyebrow, doubting Chloe’s words and she laughs, nervous. “Okay, a  _lot_ more.”

“Well, you shouldn’t pressure yourself so much, you know. Being anxious will only make you even more stressed.” 

Chloe drops her shoulders in a sigh, feeling the tension in her body. “I know. It’s just hard not to be anxious when I’m trying to place so many different subjects inside this little brain of mine. Especially when the professors don’t give a clue about the questions and I need to memorize literally everything.” 

“Oh, they’re tricky questions?”

“Only a few, but every test from every professor is so different and you never know exactly what they’re gonna put in it.” She explains, “Stuff that were emphasized, or stuff that was barely mentioned and they specifically said wouldn’t be on the test.” 

“Wow, not cool shit to do.” Beca walks further into the house and signs for Chloe to follow her, which she does and stops close to the sink, watching as Beca moves around the kitchen.

There’s a sound coming from the sink, and it’s so subtle Chloe doesn’t realize it right away. She looks at the sink with narrowed eyes, focused on listening to the sound, before deciding it’s probably water noises as it runs through the pipes. 

She turns to find Beca lifting a bottle of wine in a hand and two glasses in the other. “Want some? You can forget your asshole teachers for a while and I can totally use some company.”

Chloe considers her options. Drinking in a stranger’s house is not something she usually does, but she was going to drink by herself in her house anyway, and Beca looks inoffensive. She makes Chloe wish to stay all night talking to her, and when she realizes she actually  _can_ ,  she sees herself taking a half full glass of wine from Beca’s hand and following her back to the couch, where both women sit side by side.

_Whatever_ , Chloe thinks. She’s an adult. The worst thing that can happen is the night not to be fun at all and Chloe get home to fill her body with more alcohol to try and forget it. 

She takes a sip from her glass and sighs, leaning back on the couch and closing her eyes. “Oh, my God. I feel like I’m under a spell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever felt like you’re out of your own body? Like you’re just... existing?” 

“You’re just exhausted,” Beca turns to face her, bringing both her legs close to her chest. “But yeah, I know that feeling. Good thing that we’re always replacing our energy.” 

Chloe laughs to herself. She takes another sip before answering, “Every seven years.” Beca looks at her curiously. “Our organism replace every cell in our body every seven years,” She explains, “So we... disappear to become a whole new person.” 

“Oh wow, I’m not drunk enough to have this talk yet.” Beca says in an airy laugh. 

They quickly lose themselves between words and glasses of wine. It’s easy to talk to Beca, Chloe realizes, and for someone who’s considered an open book and tells everything to everyone, so desperately trying to fill the silence, this time she’s interested in listening. So she asks, and Beca answers. 

Beca tells her about her parents divorce and how, shortly after that, her mom’s new boyfriend expelled her from home and she had to live with her mom’s childhood friend. She tells Chloe about the picture she found of her mom as a bridesmaid on her friend’s wedding and how she had to learn how to live in a place without leaving any traits she was there. 

“What was it like? Living with those strangers?” Chloe asks. 

“Lonely,” Beca answers. “I’ve heard them talking about me upstairs. That I wasn’t their problem because I wasn’t their daughter.” Beca looks at Chloe before finishing, “But it’s okay. It was just for a few weeks before my mom and her boyfriend broke up.”

When Beca asks her about her childhood, Chloe doesn’t really want to tell her. She doesn’t want to tell Beca how happy her life was with all her siblings and her parents who were so in love, even after so many years. So she chooses the one thing that always bothered her.

“I’m the youngest of seven. When I was little it was great, because I had all the attention for myself and all of my siblings spoiled me. But as I was growing up it started to annoy me. I couldn’t do anything.” Chloe stops to fill her glass, asking for Beca to hand her hers and sharing the last bits of wine between them. “My brother, Nate, literally yelled at the first boy I’ve had a crush on. He used to pick me up in all the high school parties and everyone made fun of me for that.” 

“He was just looking after you.”

“Yeah, I know. But,” Chloe continues, “He told everyone about that boy I had a crush on. Then my sisters came home to talk to me and listed all the things they thought I shouldn’t do. I felt kinda stuck, you know? As if they were watching me all the time.”

“Maybe they didn’t want you to make the same mistakes they did.”

“I think it only makes the situation even more annoying, Beca.” Chloe giggles, even though there’s nothing funny about it. She’s just tipsy. “I needed to make mistakes so I could learn from them. That’s how things work. My mom’s warned me countless times about not talking to strangers, and still, here I am, drinking wine with one.” She smirks, lifting the glass to meet her lips.

Beca arches an eyebrow. “But a cool stranger, right?” 

Chloe laughs. “Very cool. Very cute, too.” She winks, getting a smile from Beca in return. “Can we go outside for a minute? I need a cigarette.”

She catches the surprise in Beca’s face. It happens all the time. “You don’t look like a smoker.”

“I’m not. Only when I drink, or when I’m too stressed.” 

They both stand still for a few heartbeats. Chloe feels the intense way Beca is eyeing her and her dark blue eyes carry something Chloe can’t decipher yet. 

“Come here,” Beca asks, and Chloe lifts a finger up, silently telling her to wait as she grabs a cigarette and lighter from her bag and runs to meet Beca in the middle of the stairs. 

Beca takes her to where Chloe assumes is her bedroom. Except from the moonlight coming from an open door, the room is completely dark and Beca doesn’t make a move to turn the lights on. Instead, she starts to guide Chloe toward the door, but Chloe has to stop midway to ask for a bathroom. 

“I’ll be quick,” She tells Beca, giving her the cigarette and lighter so she can use the toilet. 

And Chloe intends to be quick, but the minute she opens the door to leave, she hears that weird sound again. The same one she heard coming from the sink in the kitchen. Chloe looks at herself in the mirror and her reflection shakes before her eyes. If she wasn’t this tipsy, she wouldn’t pay attention to the sound, but before she realizes it, she’s inclining her body towards the sink to try and listen clearer. 

It wasn’t supposed to make her feel scared, but the more Chloe listens, the more the sound turns into...  words ; words whispered by an airy, low voice that repeats the same sentence over and over again.

_ You have seven hours to leave.  _

Chloe jumps backwards in a rush, her head hitting the wall behind her. She closes her eyes forcefully, until it hurts. 

“This isn’t happening.” She hears her own voice. “That’s not real.” 

Chloe pinches her arm to bring any sanity back into her mind. Because that’s not real. Ghosts don’t come out of sink drains. But the whispers are getting louder, as if they’re coming from someone who’s standing right next to her. She counts to ten. 

“You okay?” 

Chloe opens her eyes. There’s nothing to hear but Beca’s voice. She swallows, cleaning her throat before trying to find her voice again. She wants to ask Beca if she’s heard anything weird too, even though it might make her look like a drunken mess, but she doesn’t care. 

“I gotta go.” Comes out instead. 

She misses the look of deception in Beca’s face. She looks down at the floor and her hands are pinned down between her body and the wall. Chloe hears Beca’s footsteps as she enters the bathroom and a hand touches her arm, pulling it from behind her body. Beca turns Chloe’s palm up, placing the cigarette and lighter there. 

“You’re shaking,” Beca’s voice is low and careful. Chloe feels her short nails caressing the inside of her arms softly, slowly. Almost as if Beca is silently telling her there’s nothing to fear, silently calming her down. And it works, because Chloe lifts her face to look at her, taking one of Beca’s hands between her own. Beca smiles. Her eyes are as dark as a black hole. “Do you wanna smoke before you go?”

Chloe nods. 

The door in the corner of Beca’s bedroom ends up in a balcony. Chloe quietly lights her cigarette up, squeezing the end of it just to feel how fragile it is. Beca hands her the forgotten glass of wine and Chloe takes it as she lets her eyes fall on the streets, realizing how strange they look.

Everything seems out of normal. The streets are dark,  creepy , as if happiness ran away from it, or just never existed at all. So different from the world Chloe sees from her window two blocks away, with the bright white lights glowing in the streets as the vehicles come and go, one after the other.

From Beca’s balcony, she can’t tell where the sky ends and the buildings begin. She feels like she’s everywhere and nowhere, somehow. It doesn’t make sense, but Chloe isn’t thinking straight since she left the bathroom.

She brings the cigarette to her lips and inhales the smoke before slowly letting it out. Its gray uncertain shapes fly and twirl in the air before disappearing into the darkness. 

“Do you think we’re alone here?” She asks, because there’s nothing else to wonder when you’re facing the infinite. 

Beca watches her carefully, her fingers playing with each other. “You mean on Earth?”

“In the universe.” She catches Beca’s shake of head by the corner of her eyes. “Well, me neither. When I was little, I read one of my dad’s science books that talked about the possibility of black holes being portals to other dimensions.”

Chloe throws the cigarette away as Beca walks towards her, stopping by her side and facing the darkness in front of them. “Why do you think we need to go that far to enter another dimensions?”

“Yeah, I... used to think about it so much.” 

“Look back to all those supernatural stories,” Beca continues, “About children who can see ghosts and talk to them. Don’t you think habitants from different dimensions are able to walk on the same floor?”

Chloe bites her lower lip, thinking about Beca’s words. “Maybe? I mean, nothing crazy like that has ever happened to me.”

“Have you ever tried?” 

“What, contact with the dead?” Beca nods and a grimace surges in Chloe’s face. “ _Definitely_ not. What if I’m chased by demons who want to take me to a soulless sad place? I like the sunny and the colorful, thank you.” 

Beca laughs, holding her glass close to her lips. “You’re funny.”

“Hm,” Chloe drinks the tiny bit of wine that’s left on her glass. “What about you? Have you ever experienced anything like that?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Beca’s fingers find the little stones on Chloe’s bracelet. “It used to happen a lot where I’m from.” 

“Where are you from?”

She slides the stones through the elastic, one by one. “From the darkest part of the city,” The red stone goes up, then the orange and the yellow. “Where monsters are born and the stories don’t have a happy ending.”

A puff of air leaves Chloe’s mouth when she smiles. “Sounds like a nightmare.”

“But the best part is,” Beca slides closer, her voice barely above a whisper. Chloe’s hands meet each other around Beca’s neck. “No one needs to know what happens in a nightmare.” 

Their lips touch. Careful and softly at first, but turning into a rushed kiss the minute Chloe’s tongue meets Beca’s. 

It happens fast, and Chloe wants to feel everything. She buries one of her hands into Beca’s hair before letting it travel down her back slowly. The sigh Beca breathes into her mouth unlocks a burning desire Chloe doesn’t remember feeling since long ago, so she lets her fingers enter Beca’s shirt, her hand going up and scratching its way down, only to make the same path again.

Beca breaks the kiss, pausing to look at Chloe for a few seconds before moving down to kiss her neck. The open mouthed kisses Beca leaves down her collarbone feel desperate, like she can’t get enough of Chloe’s skin. Chloe tilts her head back, wanting more of the delicious goosebumps she feels whenever Beca’s tongue meets her skin. A leg finds its way between hers and Chloe grinds down, searching for friction. She holds Beca’s head in place when she feels her sucking on her neck long enough to leave a mark, a moan leaving Chloe’s mouth as she does so.

She rocks herself against Beca’s thigh once more, just when Beca’s hand move to squeeze her left breast. It’s easy for Chloe to move her head down to meet Beca’s lips once more. There’s the desire to take the girl in her arms entirely and the need between her legs that’s getting harder to ignore with each passing second.

Chloe untangles her legs from Beca’s and smiles against her lips, while, momentarily forgetting she still has the glass in one of her hands, she pushes Beca up against the balcony’s wall. The movement was fast and not calculated at all, and the cracking sound make both women jump. 

Chloe pulls back, worried. “Shit,” She immediately brings her hand back to find a broken glass between her fingers. Chloe searches Beca’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

And to her relief, Beca laughs. “That was so, so hot.”

She smiles. “Are you sure your head is okay?”

“Fuck my head,” Beca smirks. “I’m more interested in finishing what we were doing here.” 

Chloe rolls her eyes, the smile still molding her lips. And she’s so ready to give Beca what they both want when her eyes land on the clock inside the bedroom. It’s almost one in the morning. And if she’s calculating correctly, Chloe arrived at Beca’s house around six. Which means it’s been almost seven hours she’s here.

That voice whispers again, this time coming from Chloe’s head instead of the sink drain.

_ You have seven hours to leave. _

“It’s so late,” Chloe hears herself saying. “I really need to go.” 

Her steps pass quickly through Beca’s bedroom and then downstairs, where she spots her bag in the living room and turns to find Beca right beside her. 

“What is wrong?” The disappointment is clear in Beca’s voice. “We were having so much fun.”

It’s hard to resist the temptation to take that girl in her arms once more, and Chloe does just that, pecking Beca’s lips a couple times. “We can finish it tomorrow.” She promises when they part.

There’s a post-it block in the middle table. Chloe takes a pen from her bag and writes down her number on it, handing the pink squared paper to Beca once she’s finished and finally leaving her house. 

“Give Winnie some snuggles for me!” Chloe hears behind her, so she turns to look at Beca one more time.

She has absolutely no idea what it means or who Winnie might be, but when Beca doesn’t say anything else, Chloe doesn’t question. She observes the big white house for a few more minutes. Her eyes follow the root’s red extension before falling down to look at the woman standing by the door. Beca smiles at her. Chloe smiles back. 

Something inside her chest tells her she should go. Something quiet and weird, bigger than the desire she felt for Beca. So Chloe turns around to walk home once more, already excited for the time she gets to see Beca again.

***

When she wakes up the next day, the sun is shining right on her legs. Chloe usually wouldn’t mind, but it’s so hot it makes her skin burn, so she curls her legs up while blindly tapping on the floor to find her phone.

The screen is bright on her face and Chloe narrows her eyes to see it properly. She checks her messages. 

There are texts from Aubrey and a video of Lisa’s son on the family group chat. Many unread texts related to vet school. But no new messages from the dog shelter or from Beca. 

A sigh leaves her mouth when Chloe gets up. She analyzes the purple mark Beca’s left on her neck and laughs quietly to herself. She definitely wants to finish what they’ve started. 

As she lets the warm water run through her body, Chloe replays the night before in her head. The way she left Beca’s house seems silly now that she’s sober, and even if she was drunk enough to hear imaginary voices, Chloe doesn’t remember feeling as scared as she felt back then, ever in her life. 

The world looks normal when Chloe stops by the window to look down at the streets, hair still wet from the shower and her body still wrapped in a towel. Music comes from one of her neighbors’ house, a man walks his dog in the sidewalk and the cars are everywhere . There’s nothing out of place. 

For the first time for what feels like a lifetime, Chloe allows herself to have a nice day. She reads a few pages of a long forgotten book in her shelf, texts Aubrey, then Lisa, to catch up on her nieces and nephew and spends a good hour talking to her mom on the phone.

Such little, simple things, but they somehow bring back to Chloe’s body all the energy she’d lost the last months. 

By the time the sky starts to prepare for the sunset, Chloe throws herself on the couch and turns the tv on, ready to pick a random movie to watch. She taps on her phone to check if Beca’s sent her any text for the millionth time in the day, but there’s nothing but Aubrey’s new voice notes. 

Chloe puts her earphones on to listen one more of Aubrey’s funny stories, but when she looks up at the tv, her best friend’s voice sounds distant in her ears, because the woman in the news looks  exactly like Beca.

There’s so many questions in her head as she tries to hear what it’s being said. A car accident, she comprehends. A woman who looks just like Beca died in a car accident. Chloe faces her tv in disbelief and when the woman’s picture disappears, she puts on the first pair of shoes she finds and leaves her house.

Chloe’s feet barely touch the ground as she walks quickly, crossing street after street. The storm that’s forming in the sky is the color of Beca’s eyes. Her phone rings in her pocket.

“Hello?”

“ _ Chloe Beale? _ ”

The voice on the other side doesn’t sound familiar.

“Um, yes, who is it?” 

She walks in front of the grocery shop. 

“ _My name is Michelle and I’m from the dog shelter. A rescue dog arrived earlier today and you’re the next on line,_ ” Chloe enters Beca’s street. Her body shakes and she hears the woman on the other side as she finishes, “ _Her name is Winnie._ ” The phone falls from Chloe’s hand.

The storm is here. 

Chloe feels the cold raindrops on her skin as she looks at the house in front of her. Its structure is still the same, and even though there are little bits of red in the roof, Beca’s house is  _ abandoned _ . The front door lies on the floor, probably thrown away by the wind. All the white paint on the walls is gone, the gray concrete, much darker now due to the rain, makes the place look sad and lonely. The boxes Chloe helped Beca carry inside are on the same place she saw Beca for the first time, spiderwebs all over them.

It seems like nobody’s stepped into this house for  _years_.

And that’s  _not_ possible, because that’s the place Chloe was at the night before, where she drank wine with Beca and was kissed by her, the hickey still clear in her neck. 

A man surges by her side to help her get up, but she doesn’t remember falling. That was the strength carried by the moment Chloe realized she was part of something way bigger than her, or anyone else. All the gaping differences of stories told within the same scenario. Variations of the same place, alive in different worlds. She is everywhere and nowhere, the questions still too big, her mind still too small.

Chloe remembers the nights she used to question the world with her dad. Their clumsy ways of devotion to where they belong, the places they walk, the universe they breathe. The many possibilities he tried to find inside his daughter’s crazy theories, some forgotten with time, others Chloe still carries in her heart. 

She realizes she knows nothing at all. She only believes, promises, wonders and organizes informations and feelings inside her. And yet Chloe feels this confusion, like when you’re in a really important road trip but you keep forgetting where you’re driving to. 

However, she keeps driving. 

She has no idea who is Beca ,  or _ what _ is Beca. How she knew the dog’s name, or what could have happened if Chloe decided to ignore the voice and stay the seven hours in her house. She doesn’t plan to find out if Beca is the woman from the news, that would have been too much for her. She knows, though, that when their bodies were close pressed together, tiny different universes mended together.

Everything is uncertain and the world doesn’t make any sense. 

As Chloe gets up from the floor, head tilted back so the raindrops fall right on her face, she tastes the taste of lonely nights. And how crazy and unfair it is, she thinks, to slowly drown into salty waters while waiting for someone who was never really there. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was based on stories told in the Brazilian YouTube channel, “Você Sabia?” 
> 
> And I’m not sure I’ve said it here before, but I’m @snowydot on Tumblr 🥰 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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